The scene is Bankstown. In a laundromat, a middle-aged
Vietnamese man sorts through his customer's laundry. On the street,
an old German woman stops to stare at the display in the op shop.
Around the corner, a Lebanese-born boxer trains his two sons in a
back room of a gym.

Any old day in Bankstown. Thoroughly ordinary people.

But actor Mohammed Ahmad doesn't see the everyday on the streets
of Bankstown - he sees stories of courage, despair, adventure and
hope.

"You don't realise the diversity and the beauty that lives
around here because of the other attitudes that are around," the
19-year-old says. "But when you hear these amazing stories - of
professional fighters and people who were escaping the Vietnam War
and a lady who worked for Adolf Hitler - you think, 'These are
incredible people."'

Having heard the stories, Ahmad will act them out in a play
called Fast Cars and Tractor Engines. It weaves together
eight stories of real Bankstown residents, taken from more than 30
hours of interviews.

An Aboriginal woman, Margaret, shares memories of being picked
on by the white girls who lived near her North Queensland home.
Hilda is a former leader in the Hitler Youth movement who remembers
the days of fast cars and plenty. Ninh, a refugee of the Vietnam
War, recalls how a tractor engine strapped to a boat brought him to
Australia and saved his life. Even the Bankstown Mayor, Helen
Westwood, reveals deeply personal experiences.

The play's director, Roslyn Oades, says most interviews were
done at kitchen tables. "I went into all these houses in a
completely non-judgmental way. Hilda [the German woman] and her
daughter were fighting from the moment I got there, while telling
hilarious stories. [When] interviewing this Aboriginal woman and
her son, she was very at peace with the world, whereas her son
didn't like white people."

It is hard to decide which is more interesting - the stories or
the technique the actors use to deliver them. Instead of learning a
script, they don headphones that pipe the original interview into
their ears. They parrot what the interviewees say, listening and
speaking at the same time.

Oades says the actors are simply there to mediate the words of
the interviewees. "So you have this strange hyper-real performance
in that all the breathing patterns, the mistakes, are all observed
with absolute accuracy."

A voice artist by trade, Oades has been the voice of Tracey
McBean, from the ABC children's show of the same name, for the past
five years. So she understands the power of speech in drama.
"There's all this meaning in the way someone says something - the
words they choose and the words they mispronounce is really full of
meaning."

Three actors - Ahmad, Katia Molino and Vico Thai - play the
roles in Fast Cars and Tractor Engines, meaning each has
more than one character.

Oades has deliberately mismatched the characters and the actors.
Ahmad, of Lebanese heritage, plays the Vietnamese refugee. Molino,
whose parents are Italian, plays the frustrated Muslim youth, and
Thai, who is Chinese-Vietnamese, plays a young African girl.

Ahmad himself is portrayed as a character, played by Molino,
while he also plays the role of his own father. "It's very
interesting to watch," Ahmad says of Molino's depiction of him. "I
still have trouble accepting that's my voice because our voices
sound different in our heads."

At first, says Oades, it's funny to see someone do the immigrant
accent or the old-lady hobble. But the humour leads the audience to
a range of emotions, including discomfort at seeing a non-Anglo
actor voice the prejudices that exist in multi-ethnic communities.
"It's an interesting way to explore gender gaps, age gaps, race
gaps," says Oades. "If someone can hear someone they relate to
visually tell a story - like an old person telling a young person's
story - then it's putting you in those shoes."

Oades says she auditioned actors from NIDA for the roles, but
local actors captured the roles better - and relished the chance to
stretch their skills.

"Vico has only ever been asked to play Asians with really thick
accents. For Lebanese actors, it's the same. It's like the
Australian entertainment industry hasn't quite caught up with the
idea that these people aren't straight off the boat."

Tim Carroll,arts officer at the Bankstown Youth Development
Service, helped develop the concept and put Oades in contact with
those the play is based on.

"Despite the shocking press that we get, there are so many
beautiful, wonderful, rich, human things that happen [in Bankstown]
that never see the light of day," he says. "The people who go, 'Oh,
you wouldn't want to talk to me, I'm really boring' - those people
are oft-times the most fascinating individuals."